Mississippi recently passed a law in an effort to force the last remaining abortion clinic in the state to close, which could force women to sometimes critically dangerous alternatives if they are desperate to end a pregnancy. Back ally or coat hanger abortions are life threatening self-induced abortions that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of women. But one Mississippi Republican doesn’t care about those lives.

Mississippi state Rep. Bubba Carpenter voted for the restrictive abortion law signed by the governor earlier this year and he says it doesn’t matter if women die by attempting coat hanger abortions because it’s all about maintaining what he calls “moral values.” Carpenter says he’s proud that his state basically banned abortion and that he’s proud that his party is forcing desperate poor women to either give birth or die by self-induced abortion.

????”It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to– Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That’s what we’ve learned over and over and over.’ But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”

“In the years before Roe v. Wade, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year [Figure according to the Guttmacher Institute]. Although accurate records could not be kept, it is known that between the 1880s and 1973, many thousands of women were harmed as a result of illegal abortion. Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions. During this time, hospital emergency room staff treated thousands of women who either died or were suffering terrible effects of abortions provided without adequate skill and care.”

What Republicans like Bubba Carpenter are seeking to do is roll back abortion rights so that America can return to the days when women were so desperate to obtain an abortion that they would literally put their health and lives at risk to perform the procedure themselves or have an untrained individual do it for them. According to Carpenter, it’s perfectly moral to put women in that position. It’s perfectly moral to allow women to die trying to self-induce their own abortions. This is how sick and twisted the Republican Party has become. They are literally willing to allow women to die if it means forcing some pregnant women to give birth against their will. Roe v. Wade was a landmark decision for a reason. The Supreme Court made this ruling because it isn’t right for anyone to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her body. No one can force a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will. By ending legal abortion, Republicans are banning women access to a safe and viable medical procedure that prevents the need for dangerous back ally abortions. And Republicans have the gall to wonder why they’re being accused of waging a war against women.